Obama offers cuts at Copenhagen

I can't see that Obama's decision to go to Copenhagen and proclaim a goal for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions
amounts to much. The 17 per cent cut by 2020 he is talking about is in
line with the reductions foreseen in the bills now in Congress, but
those bills are stuck. Perhaps it would be unseemly not to turn up at
all--since he will be in the area, collecting his Nobel prize for most
promising world leader--but he cannot disguise the fact that, despite
all the expectations aroused earlier, he is going empty-handed. It
isn't the world he needs to convince on global warming, it is the
electorate back home.

This is all the harder since the climate science email dump,
which showed leading experts--people calling for enormous changes in
how the world's economies work--discussing ways to keep their data
private, manipulate public opinion, and deny dissenters access to the
professional literature. (None of those emails surprised me, by the
way. When it comes to public relations, the climate-science cabal is
its own worst enemy. I'm surprised so many people are surprised.)

I'll return to this subject--but I continue to believe, in any
case, that quantitative targets are not the way to go. Despite the
totalitarian instincts of some climate scientists, the problem is real
and needs to be addressed. Kyoto, however, proved beyond a doubt that
the quantity-target approach is too complicated. Convergence on a
global price of carbon makes much better sense, not just in economic
terms, but as a matter of practical diplomacy as well. The Senate bill
nods in that direction by contemplating a price collar--in effect, a
target for prices not quantities. That is the way to go, but the
diplomacy needs to be reorganised around the idea. The administration
should be leading that effort, and simultaneously making its case to US
voters.

I'm still thinking about whether Copenhagen is merely
another pointless international sideshow, or, like the intellectual
intolerance of the climate-science establishment, an actual obstacle to
getting this job done. Probably the latter.

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